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What does it mean to have a ‘calling’ – to be called to a career, a family life, or a new place? We spend our lives making names, shemot, for ourselves, shaping how we want to be known and recognised. The book of Exodus, which we begin reading this Shabbat, is titled Shemot, meaning ‘Names.’ In it, Moses is called at the burning bush to liberate the Hebrews. He resists this calling five times before reluctantly agreeing, struggling with a heavy dose of imposter syndrome. Yet Moses recognises this as a decisive moment. Most of us will experience such moments, even if they aren’t quite as grandiose as a burning bush. Many of us feel called to do hard things; I am frequently humbled by those who undertake extraordinary tasks simply because they felt called to do so. The author James Baldwin put it this way: “You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you can’t live any life at all.” (From one of his final interviews with Richard Goldstein, discussing love and identity). Ultimately, I suppose each of us is called to attend to our own life and create the ‘name’ that only we can carry. Shabbat Shalom, N.B. Talking of being called I wanted to remind of our Holocaust Memorial Day evening Wednesday 28 January with the film and life story of Marika Henriques, Hungarian Jew and survivor. See details below. Please join us. |
You’d be unsurprised to learn that I think about death a great deal. I get to accompany so many as they approach it and afterwards, I witness families as they grieve. There is no doubt that talking about and preparing for death is a good thing, if it’s manageable and available. Knowing what you might wish for in the end days is helpful not only for yourself but also for others. I read Dr Katherine Mannix’s extraordinary book, With the End in Mind; How to Live and Die Well (whilst on honeymoon – occupational hazard!). In it, she talks of ways of dying and the energy and thought we give to it to prepare ourselves, not only in a lachrymose way but in a positive and sanguine manner as well.
So it’s interesting that this last portion of the Book of Genesis, Vayechi, as we inch our way into the new Gregorian year, speaks of death and endings, both Jacob’s and Joseph’s. We encounter Jacob speaking plainly and candidly to his children:
“I am about to die” (Gen. 48:21) . . . “I am about to be gathered to my kin” (49:29).
And he tells them what he hopes for, then Joseph does the same to his brothers. They both want to ‘go home.’ They want their bodies, and bones in the case of Joseph, to be laid to rest back home. The pull for the familiar and where they came from is so compelling, so they exact promises from the brothers that they’ll go home.
Both scenes illustrate the writer William Faulkner’s truism from his 1951 play Requiem for a Nun that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
We carry it all around with us. I like thinking that more than just our life should inform our death but equally, the other way around. Our death and what matters should inform our life and the way we live. This feels apposite for these early days of 2026. Join us for what is likely to be a an intimate first Shabbat of the year at FPS.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
This season of Christmas and its repercussions and ripples affect all of us living here, chiefly being the invitation to gather with friends, family or community, even just briefly through these sometimes interminable bank holidays. I know it’s not easy for everyone. Not everyone has folk to gather with. Loneliness is a real epidemic and I think of it a great deal during these days.
This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayigash, captures the moment Joseph’s brothers draw near to him. The word ‘vayigash’ literally means ‘he drew near.’ Joseph properly [and rather shockingly] reveals his real identity to them. This is followed by much intimate crying and getting closer. Jospeh wants to be with Benjamin, his brother, and his father, Jacob. His brothers seemed to have learned a lesson not to cause more grief in the family and they are loathe to return to Jacob without Benjamin.
I suppose this portion serves to remind that getting close to family, friends or community is a very good thing. If it is not available to us, then I want to remind you all that community is here for everyone. It’s one of the best things about FPS.
This Shabbat morning after the service, Beverley will host a Bagel Brunch for all who fancy staying and being together on one of these bank holidays. Do let know if you fancy staying.
I wish you a restful few days.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
This anger, this darkness, this spilling out of anger I know is frightening to many.
I hear that from many of you and I want to share the commitment I’m experiencing to safety and security for our community and our Chanukah gatherings this week, both tonight’s interfaith lighting and Friday’s families’ and members’ Shabbat Chanukah.
We continue to light. From Talmud onwards through Maimonides, Shulchan Aruch to today, we’re encouraged to light the chanukiah in a public space at our home’s entrance. But always there’s the proviso of you don’t feel safe, don’t do it. That tightrope of sentiments is where, maybe, we all are right now. It’s ok.
I’m holding on to the kindness and heroism of Boris and Sophia Gurman who lost their lives trying to stop the gunmen, and of Ahmad Fatih Al Ahmed, who literally put himself and his body on the line to protect those being attacked. The world has those souls, as well as the others. Let’s add to the former this Chanukah with courage and connection.
But I’m here for everyone. Please reach out if you need me.
Wishing you a meaningful Chanukah with as much light and love as you can muster.
Shabbat Shalom too.
Rebecca
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Sheila Hancock, the actor and writer, spoke about life and ageing. It’s all down to you, she said. That is the truth that guides life. Every opportunity we take or conversation we begin. Every new thing we agree to, or principle we hold onto. It is all down to us. Parashat Vayeshev introduces Joseph in his idiosyncratic specialness. As he becomes a parent, Jacob is unable to shift from the favouritism he experienced in his childhood as he singles out Joseph for love, praise and the famous multi-coloured dream coat. As a young man in Egypt, Joseph fends for himself. He continually falls on his feet, doing well maybe because of God’s blessing, his canniness or both. In a particularly dramatic moment in this week’s Torah portion, Joseph refuses the overture by the wife of his boss Potiphar: |
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This verse captures something extraordinary that calls to us in the way we navigate moments of decision making in our lives. By way of the trope (or accent) in the Hebrew text (a shalshelet over the verb וַיְמָאֵ֓ן, “he refused”), the Masoretes indicate how very super-human Joseph’s resistance to her advances must have been. The note stretches out this one word in its intensity and uncertainty. He is resisting temptation. This is a fairly dramatic moment but we all know times when we have had to decide something quickly. Rabbi Sheila Weinberg and the Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Alter of Gur, 19th century, both talk of the moments of decision-making that we all come across, where we need to pause, take a breath and really think. Even further afield, both Lao Tzu, 6th BCE, and Pema Chodron, Buddhist Nun, agree – the centre of your being is where you have the answers. We all have to dig deep, take a moment, question ourselves and know that ultimately, it’s all down to us. A neat reminder. Shabbat Shalom, |
Last week, our MP Sarah Sackman KC, came to Shabbat service. She told me that, on Shabbat morning, it was hard to leave her family to come to a synagogue that was not her own. But she was so happy she’d come; she enjoyed our service so much. Anticipation and reality are often different.
It was a compliment indeed.
This week, we encounter Jacob still on the run, nervous and anxious about his brother.
Jacob was greatly frightened; in his anxiety, he divided the people with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps. (Genesis 32:8)
He is then utterly surprised by their reconciliation and by the warmth of Esau.
Esau ran to greet him. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, he kissed him; and they wept. (Genesis 33:4)
Being pleasantly surprised is one of the best things in life – and I love the idea of that happening here at FPS and of you being pleased you came. Please try us. Our newly restored building is worth a look and a visit.
We like to talk of FPS standing on three pillars: sacred (and magical, as Sarah Sackman encountered) moments of prayer and learning; gathering with and for each other; and our work for justice, all of which try to meet us in our busy lives, exactly where we are.
Shabbat shalom,
Rebecca
This Shabbat will be all about our place. Literally. We get to dedicate and celebrate our place in the wider community with our MP Sarah Sackman, our Mayor and our Councillors. We are very much woven into the fabric of things here in Finchley, in Barnet, in London. And of course we also have been the place for our families, our members and those who have found consolation and joy within our walls. The word in Hebrew for place is makom. In post Biblical literature, the rabbis started to see makom as symbolising God, or goodness or the sacred.
So how extraordinary that this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayeitze refers to makom so repeatedly. Jacob, our Patriarch, has left his mother, his father and his home, taking with him only his birthright, stolen from his brother Esau, from whom he is now running. He’s alone, maybe for the first time, and primed for an experience.
He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.
וַיִּפְגַּ֨ע בַּמָּק֜וֹם וַיָּ֤לֶן שָׁם֙ כִּי־בָ֣א הַשֶּׁ֔מֶשׁ וַיִּקַּח֙ מֵאַבְנֵ֣י הַמָּק֔וֹם וַיָּ֖שֶׂם מְרַֽאֲשֹׁתָ֑יו וַיִּשְׁכַּ֖ב בַּמָּק֥וֹם הַהֽוּא׃
Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely יהוה is in this place, and I did not know it!”
וַיִּיקַ֣ץ יַעֲקֹב֮ מִשְּׁנָתוֹ֒ וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אָכֵן֙ יֵ֣שׁ יְהֹוָ֔ה בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א יָדָֽעְתִּי׃
Shaken, stirred up, he said, “How incredible is this place.”
…וַיִּירָא֙ וַיֹּאמַ֔ר מַה־נּוֹרָ֖א הַמָּק֣וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה…
Sefat Emet (Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Ger, 19th–20th century) wrote a great deal about makom, place, in this moment of Torah, explaining sometimes we have to be ready for the revelation, for the feeling and meaning that exudes from the place if we let it. Jacob sees what’s there, hamakom – truly sees it. Maybe it’s his first spiritual awakening. I wonder for all of us what places and moments have moved us and offered a magical sense of makom, of being in the place that you need to be.
I feel that right now in our renewed sanctuary. The whole synagogue has been lovingly restored to show its beautiful bones, as our architect Phyllida Mills identified, and this is why taking a moment to acknowledge this place and all it does and symbolises is a good thing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
P.S.
For those who’d like and are able to be good neighbours (or angels) on Christmas Day by driving nurses to and from North London Hospice please be in touch with me. I am gathering a small group of us. Thank you.
I am in New York this Shabbat. Invited to preach at the installation of our former student rabbi James Feder in his first congregation, I wanted to be there. What a time to travel in the ‘Jewish’ world and to experience mood and feelings! These are interesting days to be here in Manhattan, with the new Mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Here, politics has very much permeated the Bimah, as countless rabbis in NYC speak about the mayoral election, even guiding their congregants which way to vote. Gone are the days when the political could be kept out of the synagogue.
This week in London, as our government continues to challenge the small boat crossings and in so doing, the perceptions of immigration, Lord Alf Dubbs, good friend of FPS, spoke about the way we refer to refugees and those seeking asylum as core to our humanity and the British values of which we’ve become proud. He reminded us all that he owes his life to Sir Nicolas Winton z’l and to the welcome of the Jewish community and Great Britain. Immigration is both separate from, and deeply connected to, our language about the other. I welcomed hearing our friend this week at a time when we needed him.
Parashat Toldot, the Torah portion this week, cements the idea and potential of difference to create animosity or distrust when it is just an idea in our matriarch Rebekah’s heart and head. Confused by her pregnancy, she wonders, if this is so why do I exist? She’s told:
Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will come from you, and one shall be stronger than the other.
Rebekah leans into this divisiveness with her support of Jacob’s deceit over his brother Esau. It’s a difficult passage to read. I learned a new text this week from the book of Jubilees, which was written in approximately 100BCE and is in the Apocrypha and not the main Tanach. When Rebekah is dying, she calls her sons and husband to reconcile and tells them that nothing matters more than love and connection. She even apologies to Esau for her unmotherly stance and offers love. And guess what? In a magnificent death bed scene we might all wish for, they all do it. They say yes. They say who else could I love like this? What is there more than love? and in the case of Esau, he forgives her for her suspect parenting.
It’s the most unexpected and beautiful text, extremely comforting to read right now.
Nothing stays the same forever. Nothing. May reconciliation and kindness be available to us all.
I so look forward to seeing you at our Civic Shabbat Service of Rededication next week, 29th November, where we will welcome our MP, Sarah Sackman KC, our Mayor Rabbi Danny Rich and many of our Councillors and honoured guests like you.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
יִּהְיוּ֙ חַיֵּ֣י שָׂרָ֔ה מֵאָ֥ה שָׁנָ֛ה וְעֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה וְשֶׁ֣בַע שָׁנִ֑ים שְׁנֵ֖י חַיֵּ֥י שָׂרָֽה׃
Sarah’s lifetime—the span of Sarah’s life—came to one hundred and twenty-seven years.
וַתָּ֣מׇת שָׂרָ֗ה בְּקִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע הִ֥וא חֶבְר֖וֹן בְּאֶ֣רֶץ כְּנָ֑עַן וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ׃
Sarah died in Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan; and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.
This week’s portion, Chayei Sarah, tells of Sarah’s death. The repetition of the word year, or ’shanah’ in Hebrew, emphasises the importance of all her life and the equity of all parts. Her husband Abraham is also the first person ever, in Torah, to offer a eulogy, in Hebrew a hesped. That’s how we learned to mark our loss and express our grief, by sharing it with others. Remembering and mourning is our duty, honouring whole lives of those we recall and loved personally but also generations who went before us.
This week is the anniversary of ‘Kristallnacht,’ known as the November Pogrom, 9/10 November 1938. 1,200 synagogues were desecrated and thousands of Jewish businesses and homes looted. Following the assassination of a junior diplomat in Paris by a young Polish Jew, the Nazi Party incited mass anti-Jewish violence, claiming it as a spontaneous popular ‘retaliation’ against the ‘enemy within’. 90 people were killed and over 25,000 Jewish men were arrested and deported to Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Alfred Wiener and his colleagues at the Jewish Central Information Office in Amsterdam collected over 350 testimonies and reports. This doctor’s report below is from the Wiener Library collection.
On the notorious Thursday evening when the synagogues burned and the shops and homes were wrecked, I was arrested by the Gestapo with the explanation, “We must take you into Schutzhaft in connection with the events of this day.“ I was transferred to the remand prison and remained there one day. Treatment there quite correct, perhaps it could even be called friendly. Released towards evening, so that at first the thought occurred to us that we would be released to go home… Arrival in Buchenwald: order to get out. Even louder and cruder shouts and hail of insults. Order: “Hats off.” Again herded at top speed and then a proper running of the gauntlet. We had to pass between two lines of SS men, one punched and kicked, the other beat us with knuckle-dusters and whips. .. Again it was the case that agile younger men got away with a couple of blows whilst the older men, some of whom were suffering acutely, emerged from the alley bleeding and limping..Basically in Buchenwald there is no treatment of wounds for Jews. They have no claim to bandaging material, to medication or to any medical help whatsoever.
We will light a yahrzeit candle into our shabbat service this Friday, making space for honouring these memories.
Shabbat Shalom
Rebecca
This week has seen the return of Col. Asaf Hamami, 40, Capt. Omer Neutra, 21, and Staff Sgt. Oz Daniel, 19, to be buried at home with their families.
The return of children to their parents has not happened for everyone. Young people dying is particularly difficult to bear – and we know it, as we have watched countless deaths in Gaza, as well as in Israel. I always remind myself of Rachel Goldberg saying almost two years ago, If you are not crying for the death of babies on both sides then your moral compass is askew. I have officiated at many funerals where parents are burying their children and it is unbearable each time. As so it should be.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayera, describes Abraham seemingly agreeing to the slaughter of his son, Isaac, at his own hands and the probable, indeed assured, death of his older son, Ishmael, when he’s sent into the wilderness with his mother and only one skin of water. Despite the gentle language, the stories are brutal and we must make sense of them every year as we read this passage (and again on Rosh Hashanah).
Neither of the boys dies but surely both are traumatised from the near death experience. Perhaps Torah is teaching one clear lesson: never stop being outraged and shocked by these deaths. Abraham is inexplicably silent in the face of both plans, although he is distressed:
The matter distressed Abraham greatly on account of his son. (21:11)
Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, finds his impending death from thirst so unbearable she has to sit a bow’s shot off once she has given him all the water she has.
“Let me not look on as the child dies.” She sat at a further distance and burst out crying.” (21:16)
It’s fascinating that we never see Abraham again with his children, these two sons. Nothing matters more than our capacity to be moved by violence and untimely deaths – surely it’s’ what makes us human. Torah manages, in its tenacity and understated emotion, to hit hard and to offer the most intense of commentaries on familial life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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